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Robyn Eckhardt David Hagerman

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Penang, Malaysia

Robyn Eckhardt writes on food and travel in Asia and Turkey for The New York Times, Saveur, Australia's SBS Feast magazine and other publications. She writes a column on street food for Wall Street Journal Asia, is on the masthead at Travel+Leisure Southeast Asia and is a contributor to the forthcoming "Oxford Companion to Sweets."

Food, travel and street photographer David Hagerman has been shooting professionally for almost a decade. He has photographed in Asia, Europe and Turkey for Saveur, the Global New York Times, SBS Feast, Wall Street Journal Asia, Travel+Leisure and Food & Wine. He leads private and small-group food and travel photography workshops in Asia and Turkey.

Robyn and David collaborate on the food blog EatingAsia, which was named Editor's Choice for Best Culinary Travel Blog in Saveur's 2014 Food Blog Awards. They have lived in Asia for over 17 years and currently reside in Penang, Malaysia.

In 1998, Robyn and David visited Turkey for the first time. It was the beginning of an obsession with the country, its people and especially its food that has prompted many repeat visits. Over the years Robyn and David have driven over 11,000 miles along Turkey’s back roads in search of regional specialties. In 2016 Rux Martin Books/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt will publish their first cookbook, a collection of recipes, stories and images from Istanbul and off-the-beaten track eastern Turkey.

Twitter: @EatingAsia and @DaveHagerman

Articles by Author

When it comes to street food in Southeast Asia, Singapore and Bangkok receive the lion’s share of kudos. Yet it is Penang City — an urbanized island off the northwestern coast of peninsular Malaysia — whose street food scene offers all that those cities do and more, just an hour’s plane ride north of Singapore and 90 minutes south of Bangkok.

That’s why Penang, home to former British colonial port and UNESCO world heritage site George Town, is a weekend destination for residents of Singapore and Bangkok alike.

Have a hankering for Indian food? Chinese? You’ll find it in Penang

Like Singapore’s street food, Penang’s is wildly varied. Think wonton noodles, roti canai (flaky and crispy flatbreads cooked on a griddle and eaten with dal and curry) and mee goreng, yellow noodles fried with chili paste. All of this is prepared and served within feet of each other, thanks to a population made up primarily of Chinese, Indians and Malays.

Like Bangkok and Singapore, Penang’s street food is served from the wee hours of the morning until late at night. And it isn’t limited to officially sanctioned hawker centers. In Penang, sellers serve their specialties from stalls parked beneath umbrellas on street corners and sidewalks, inkopitiam(coffee shops), and within and outside of food markets.

Street food that’s all in the family

In Penang, culinary skills built on the back of experience can be tasted in dishes served from one of the island’s many hawker stalls run by older and even second- or third-generation cooks.

Many on the island still use cooking methods and techniques that are being lost in other parts of the region. They commonly use live fire or coals. Many serve their dishes on banana leaves, which release an appetite-rousing scent when they come into contact with hot food. And, at a time when American cooks are just coming around to the versatility and deliciousness of lard, Penang’s Chinese hawkers have been capitalizing on it all along. They add cracklings to stir-fries and broths and drizzle liquid lard over dry noodle dishes.

Savor Penang with your eyes through this slideshow:

Main photo: No culinary excursion to Penang is complete without a few plates of char koay teow, rice noodles stir-fried with bean sprouts, Chinese chives, cockles and prawns. The best versions are fried in lard and cooked over charcoal. Credit: Copyright David Hagerman

By now, you’ve probably heard about turmeric: the yellow-orange rhizome native to South Asia recognized for its antioxidant and anti-inflammatory properties.

The ingredient in Indian and southeast Asian cuisines that colors curries and other dishes gold, turmeric (Curcuma longa) is a staple in Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicines. Studies suggest that the rhizome may be helpful in treating osteoarthritis, viral and bacterial infections, stomach ulcers, cancer and other conditions.

I’ve known of turmeric’s usefulness in treating the common cold since 2008, when I stumbled upon sugar-coated slices of the rhizome at the central market in Hoi An, Vietnam. I’d been nursing a scratchy throat and runny nose for three chilly, drizzly days. When a vendor heard me cough, she pushed a bag of candied turmeric in my direction and motioned toward my throat and red eyes. I ate several slices then and there and intermittently snacked on the turmeric for the rest of the day. By morning, my sore throat was gone. By day two, I felt good as new.

A Not-So-Common Cure for the Common Cold

Over the last few years I’ve incorporated turmeric into my daily diet, usually combined with green tea, ginger and lemongrass in the form of a powerhouse infusion. I drink the refreshing, slightly spicy and astringent elixir iced, as a preventive. I haven’t suffered a cold since late 2011.

So this Christmas, I’m giving friends the gift of good health in the form of jars of candied turmeric slices (and making extra for myself to carry with me on travels). The lovely orange flesh of the rhizome has a slight bitterness that proves a wonderful foil for a coating of white sugar. To increase the snack’s healthfulness, I add black pepper — believed to increase the body’s ability to absorb turmeric’s beneficial ingredient, curcumin — to the simple syrup in which I poach thin slices of turmeric.

An Unexpected Extra That You Can Tip Your Glass To

At the end, I’m left with a bonus: a beautiful, astringent-bitter simple syrup that makes a great flavoring for cocktails.

Like ginger, turmeric peels most easily with the edge of a spoon. The rhizome stains anything it touches (wear an apron) and will leave a dark orange, tacky goo on your spoon and knife. To remove it and the color that’s left on your hands, cutting board and other kitchen surfaces, wash with a kitchen cream cleanser.

Look for fresh turmeric at Whole Foods and other specialty grocery stores, gourmet markets and southeast Asian and Indian groceries.

Candied Turmeric

Prep time: 15 to 20 minutes to peel and slice the turmeric plus up to 6 hours to dry the turmeric slices.

Cook time: 20 to 25 minutes

Yield: 3/4 to 1 cup candied turmeric slices

Thin slices are paramount here, as is allowing ample time for your turmeric to dry after poaching. Rush this step and you’ll end up with unattractive clumps of sugar and rhizome.

Ingredients

3/4 pound fresh turmeric

1 cup water

3/4 cup sugar, plus 1/3 cup for tossing the poached turmeric

Directions

Prepping the turmeric:

1. Break any small knobs off of the main turmeric root and use the edge of a spoon to peel the skin off of all of the rhizome pieces. Use a paring knife to peel away any stubborn bits of skin.

2. Rinse the peeled turmeric and slice it as thinly as possible into coins and strips.

To candy the turmeric:

1. In a medium saucepan, heat the water. Add 3/4 cup sugar and stir to dissolve.

2. Add the turmeric, stir to submerge all of the pieces and bring the syrup to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer briskly until the turmeric slices are tender but not limp, about 25 minutes.

3. Drain the turmeric in a colander or sieve placed over a bowl, then transfer the turmeric slices to a cooling rack set over a baking sheet or piece of foil or parchment paper. (Set the turmeric syrup aside to cool and use to flavor sparkling water and cocktails.) Arrange the turmeric slices on the rack so that they do not overlap and place in a well-ventilated spot (underneath a ceiling fan is ideal). Allow the turmeric to dry until the slices are slightly tacky but no longer wet, at least 3 hours and as many as 6 hours, depending on the temperature and ventilation in the room.

4. Toss the turmeric slices in 1/3 cup of sugar until coated. (Don’t throw away leftover sugar; it’s delicious in tea.) Store the turmeric in a clean, dry jar or other container. If you live in a hot, humid climate you may need to refrigerate it to keep the sugar from dissolving.

The Orangutang

Yield: 1 cocktail

Syrup and orange juice make this pretty and potent bourbon cocktail a little bit sweet. Campari and turmeric add a nice astringent-bitter edge; lemon juice adds a hint of tartness.

Pour all of the ingredients except for the orange slice into a cocktail shaker. Add a handful of ice. Shake and pour the cocktail and ice into a short glass. Garnish the rim of the glass with the orange slice.

Main photo: Candied turmeric provides a gift for friends — and for yourself. The simple syrup left over from the candied turmeric recipe makes a wonderful flavoring for cocktails. Credit: David Hagerman

Pumpkins are a fixture at autumn farmers markets in Turkey, where they grow so large that they’re often cut with saws and sold in halves or by the slice. Like Americans, Turks love their pumpkin both savory — in soups, stews and as stuffed vegetables — and sweet.

Perhaps the most prized Turkish dessert is kabak tatlisi (literally, “pumpkin sweet”), wedges of pumpkin simmered in a syrup made by using sugar to leach the gourd of its natural juices. Because the recipe doubles or triples easily and the result keeps well for a day or two in the refrigerator, it’s a perfect dessert for holidays that demand do-ahead short-cuts, like Thanksgiving.

A sweet dessert tamed by nutty toppings

I’ve been a pumpkin lover all my life, yet until recently, kabak tatlisi, which is often served on its own or with kaymak (Turkish clotted cream), left me cold. Then I sampled it in Hatay province in southeast Turkey, where the pumpkin is served drizzled with tahini (that is a Turkish pantry staple) and sprinkled with crushed walnuts. The tahini’s slight bitterness tames the cloying sweetness of the pumpkin and crunchy walnuts complement the pudding-soft texture of the vegetable. The tahini’s oil content lends a rich, satisfying mouth feel, but since it’s made up mostly of vegetable, kabak tatlisi settles lightly in the stomach.

Though Turkish cooks usually make kabak tatlisi in a covered pan on top of the stove, I’ve found that the dish cooks wonderfully — and with less bother — in the oven. It emerges a lovely burnt orange, tinged with brownish bits from the caramelization.

Do not fear the sugar

Be prepared. This recipe calls for what will seem like a lot of sugar. Resist the temptation to cut back. The sugar is there to pull liquid out of the pumpkin. Yes, the result is super-sweet, but kabak tatlisi isn’t meant to be eaten in American pumpkin-pie-sized wedges. Just a few cubes per diner — three or four little bites of caramel-y, tahini-nutty sweetness to end a meal — will do.

Resist also any urge to reduce cooking time by cutting the pumpkin into smaller pieces than this recipe indicates, or it will turn to mush before it caramelizes and the syrup has reduced. Be sure to use unadulterated tahini, without peanuts or peanut butter. Its bitter edge is essential to the success of this dish.

Plan ahead: the pumpkin must “soak” in the sugar for 8 hours (or overnight) before baking.

Caramelized Pumpkin with Tahini and Walnuts (Firinda Kabak Tatlisi)

Note: This recipe can easily be doubled, halved, cut into thirds. The rule of thumb is one part sugar to two parts pumpkin. Do not serve kabak tatlisi hot out of the oven. Room temperature or slightly chilled is best. Make sure your tahini is at room temperature when you serve.

Prep time: Up to 1/2 hour to prep the pumpkin; 8 hours to “soak” the pumpkin

Cook time: 45 minutes

Yield: Serves 8

Ingredients

1 1/2 pounds peeled pumpkin

3/4 pound (1 1/2 cups white sugar)

12 tablespoons pure tahini, at room temperature and whisked to remove any lumps

3/4 cup chopped walnuts

This Turkish pumpkin dessert features pumpkin wedges “soaked” for hours in sugar to draw out the liquid from the gourd. Credit: David Hagerman

2. Arrange the pumpkin pieces in a baking dish or tray just large enough to hold them closely, but without crowding.

3. Sprinkle the sugar over the pumpkin and cover the dish with plastic wrap.

4. Leave the pumpkin at room temperature for 8 hours or overnight. Turn the pumpkin pieces occasionally – once every few hours, or once before bed and once after you get up — to expose all sides to the sugar.

Baking the pumpkin:

1. Preheat the oven to 350 F.

2. Before baking, turn the pumpkin pieces one last time in what has likely become a mixture of syrup and lumps of wet granulated sugar.

3. Place the baking dish on the middle rack of the oven and bake for 40 minutes, gently turning the pumpkin pieces and basting with the sugar syrup once or twice.

4. Check the pumpkin for doneness by piercing a piece with a sharp knife. There should be no resistance.

5. Baste the pumpkin once more, then raise the heat to 400 F and continue to bake until it shows bits of caramel brown in some spots and the syrup bubbles, about 10 to 15 minutes.

6. Cool the pumpkin in its baking dish.

7. To serve, cut the pumpkin into small cubes or wedges and carefully transfer to bowls or plates. Spoon a bit of syrup over it, if you like, or leave it in the dish. Drizzle 1 1/2 tablespoons of tahini over each serving of pumpkin and sprinkle with walnuts.

Main photo: This prized Turkish dessert, kabak tatlisi, features pumpkin wedges simmered in a sweet sugar-based syrup and topped with tahini and walnuts. Credit: David Hagerman

Bread is to Turkey as rice is to China. Once upon a time most of the country’s commercially sold breads were made in firin, or wood-fired stone oven bakeries. Today urban redevelopment, gentrification and customer preference for the convenience offered by grocery stores and hypermarkets have rendered firin nearly obsolete in many cities and towns in western Turkey. But in the country’s eastern half, from the provinces bordering Syria in the southeast and heading north to the Black Sea coast, firin (the term refers both to the oven and the bakery) remain a source of daily bread and a center of community life.

You’ll often know a firin by the stack of firewood outside its front door. Ovens are heated directly by fires built inside, or indirectly via fireboxes. In some parts of eastern Turkey, firin feature a tandir in addition to, or instead of, the standard stone oven.

Firin range from pocket sized to expansive. In Van, a city in Turkey’s far east, tiny Kucuk Yildiz (“Little Star”) packs mixing, proofing and shaping areas in two low stories stacked above the wood oven, which sits in the middle of the bakery’s approximately 10-by-12-foot ground floor. Unbaked pide (plain flatbreads) and corek (oily and flaky flatbreads) slide down into the oven, and when the breads are finished they’re stored stacked against the firin’s window.

What comes out of a firin depends on where it’s located. Pide are common to much of eastern Turkey, but they vary greatly in size and shape, from Diyarbakir’s huge puffy trapezoids to Tokat’s thin oblongs. On the Black Sea, corn bread and heavy loaves of koy ekmegi (“village bread”), made with unbleached flour and marked by the chard leaves baked into their base, are mainstays, and in the southeast lavash — for wrapping the ubiquitous kebab — is common.

Many firin switch up their offerings depending on the time of day. Simit and morning breads, like the large envelope-shaped flaky breads called kete in Kars and the gently spiced coiled buns baked in Antakya, may give way at lunchtime to pide and, in the southeast, lahmacun or katikli ekmek (flatbreads with a thin shmear of spicy cheese). As late afternoon approaches, some firin in Sanliurfa turn out sugar-sprinkled flatbreads, while in Adiyaman the sugar is supplemented with soft cheese.

Firin for the community

Firin are not only bakeries, but community ovens as well, to which homemakers and esnaf lokantasi (“tradesmen’s restaurants”) pay a nominal fee (less than U.S. $1) to cook their own foods. In mid-morning, restaurant staffers arrive with pots of stew and trays of meat and vegetables; come late afternoon, sons and daughters ferry in pans of fish fillets seasoned with herbs and kirmizi biber (crushed red pepper), potatoes layered with bell peppers, tomatoes and onions or pans of white beans with bits of meat and tomato. If a firin is located near a butcher a homemaker might call in a order — 10 pirzola (flattened lamb chops), for instance — that the butcher will season and send to the oven.

Finished dishes are set out ready for pickup on the firin’s marble counter or wooden cooling rack, draped with a large pide that will keep the meal hot. That pide will also serve as a potholder for whomever is carrying the dish home.

Some firin deliver — by bike, car, truck and wheelbarrow. During Ramadan, Van’s Kucuk Yildiz packs boxes of corek to send by bus to Istanbul, for migrants who couldn’t imagine a pre-dawn meal without their home city’s beloved breakfast flatbread.

Most cooks acquainted with Turkish food know of borek, a dish of phyllo-like pastry leaves called yufka brushed with butter or oil, layered with meat or cheese, and baked. In Istanbul and other parts of Turkey yufka, when not made at home, is usually purchased fresh and pliable at weekly markets and from specialists called yufkaci.

A few years ago while traveling along Turkey’s central Black Sea coast I discovered yufka’s other incarnation, as a thin cracker-crisp round meant to be rehydrated — or not — before being incorporated into borek. On the Black Sea, yufka is also rolled, sliced and dried for islama, a dish of yufka spirals topped with chicken or turkey and crushed walnuts and doused with melted butter and broth. And I found that when it comes to filling their borek, central Black Sea cooks go with the season.

Late one February, at a family-owned restaurant 25 miles inland, I feasted on zilbert boregi, a short stack of yufka sheets encasing sautéed borage. Light and crispy, its filling tasting of artichoke and asparagus with a hint of mushroom, that borek hinted at the spring that was beginning to show itself in the region’s budding fruit trees. Six months later in a town a few hours east, I feasted on borek spilling mushrooms foraged from nearby hills, their meatiness foretelling the coming winter.

A sweet deviation

But my favorite Black Sea borek is one that was made for me by Esen, a rare woman in a male-dominated trade who owns a yufka shop not far from the central Black Sea fishing town of Sinop. A short sturdy woman in her late 30s, Esen toils over her big round gas-fired griddle from the wee hours of the morning until late in the afternoon, turning out katlama (stacked yufka rounds with a slick of butter in between) and layered and rolled sweet and savory borek.

Layers of traditional borek. Credit: David Hagerman

One morning I asked Esen what she intended to do with a big pumpkin sitting on a table near her griddle. She smiled and grabbed the pumpkin by its stem, raised it over her head and threw it on the concrete floor where it split neatly in two. After peeling and grating the vegetable she roughly chopped two handfuls of walnuts and measured out a bit of sugar. Then she laid a leaf of dried yufka on her griddle, brushed it with oil and built a borek.

Sparely sugared, it was a delightful departure from the syrup-soaked Turkish pastries I’d eaten up till then, with crunchy walnuts and crispy pastry contrasting beautifully with softened pumpkin.

Pumpkin and Walnut Borek (Kabak ve Cevizli Boregi)

Dried yufka and a hot griddle make for a crispier, lighter borek. Baking sheets and an oven work just as well and fresh phyllo sheets, fused and left to dry, are a fine substitute for dried yufka. Don’t worry if the dough tears or wrinkles as you’re making the borek; imperfections add to the charm of this rustic dish.

Plan to lay out your yufka or phyllo to dry at least six hours before assembly. Once that’s done the dish comes together quickly because the borek is baked flat, in one big piece.

Serve this dish for breakfast or as an afternoon snack. It also makes a wonderful dessert, served (untraditionally) hot from the oven with a scoop of ice cream.

Serves 6 to 8

Ingredients

10 sheets of phyllo

3 cups grated pumpkin or sweet squash

1½ cups chopped walnuts

4 tablespoons sugar

¼ teaspoon salt

Canola or other light cooking oil

4 tablespoons butter, melted

Directions

1. Lay a single sheet of phyllo flat on a work surface. Using a pastry brush, wet it lightly with water. Lay another sheet of phyllo on top of the wet sheet and then use a rolling pin to fuse the two together. Repeat with the remaining eight sheets of phyllo, fusing them 2-by-2 to make five thick sheets in total. Transfer all to cookie sheets or paper towels and leave uncovered in an airy room to dry for at least six hours or as long as overnight.

2. Once the pastry is dry, place the pumpkin, walnut, sugar and salt in a medium bowl and mix with a fork or your fingers.

3. To assemble the borek, lightly oil a cookie sheet large enough to accommodate the yufka or phyllo (at least 15 by 10 inches). Place one sheet of pastry on the cookie sheet (if the pastry hangs over the sides of the cookie sheet just fold the excess inward) and lightly brush it with butter.

4. Sprinkle one quarter of the filling over the buttered pastry — it will not cover the phyllo completely. Place another pastry sheet on top of the pumpkin-walnut filling, pressing it lightly onto the filling with your palms (don’t worry if it cracks a bit). Butter that pastry sheet too. Top with one quarter of the filling, and repeat until all of the filling and pastry is used up. Brush the top piece of pastry with butter.

5. Bake the borek in a 350 F oven for 10 to 12 minutes, or until the top is showing splotches of golden brown (if your oven is small reverse the position of the cookie sheet halfway through).

6. While the borek is baking, lightly oil another cookie sheet. Remove the borek from the oven and place the second oiled cookie sheet upside down over its top. Squeezing the two cookie sheets together, flip the borek, carefully remove the first cookie sheet, and return it to the oven to bake another 12 to 15 minutes, or until nicely browned.

7. Cut the borek into 6 or 8 squares and serve hot or at room temperature.

Top photo: Pumpkin and walnut borek from Turkey. Credit: David Hagerman

Five years ago at a Chinese restaurant in San Francisco, Turk Murat Demirtas ate a meal that changed his life. It wasn’t beef with red peppers or kung pao chicken that moved the Istanbul resident, who was vacationing in the United States at the time, but what came after: a fortune cookie.

“‘What is it?’ I asked my friends. I had never ever seen this product! Then I opened it and read my fortune: ‘Your new business will be successful,'” Demirtas told us recently in the front office at ForFun, his small fortune cookie factory — Turkey’s first — in Istanbul’s chichi Nisantasi district.

A lawyer specializing in copyright and branding, he saw great potential for the novelty food in his own country, one with a historical affinity for fortune telling. In the Ottoman era soothsayers advised sultans in Topkapi Palace. Today Turks still practice kahve fali, or fortune telling from coffee grounds. After returning home, Demirtas shared his hunch with his American partner (and now fortune cookie fortune translater) Douglas Groesser, a teacher at Istanbul’s Bilgi University, and founded ForFun Fortune Cookie in 2009.

Cookie entrepreneur

Demirtas’ road from lawyer and dance teacher (infectiously enthusiastic, he moonlights as an instructor of salsa, samba and belly dancing) to fortune cookie maker was anything but smooth. When he tried to purchase equipment from Boston company Sci Technology, whose president invented the world’s first fully automated fortune cookie machine, he was refused.

“They didn’t trust me,” Demirtas says, but then Groesser’s mother stepped in. After a few phone calls on his behalf the company relented.

So he and Groesser spent a week in Boston training to use the machine. “Crazy! It’s very complicated!” Demirtas said. The partners then placed their order and returned to Turkey. There, the government denied their application for a license to manufacture.

It took six months to convince the licensing bureau, whose officials couldn’t comprehend that a food containing paper, such as fortune cookies, would be safe to eat.

A new recipe for Turkish fortune cookies

Local ingredients presented the next obstacle. In addition to white sugar, Sci Technology’s recipe calls for corn flour and cornstarch, ingredients expensive in Turkey that Demirtas had to replace with wheat flour to bring costs under control. The new batter was so sticky that it gummed up the machine. Finally Demirtas and Groesser flew Sci Technology founder Yongsik Lee to Istanbul, where he worked with the duo to tailor the local batter to the machine’s requirements. The unintended result is a better fortune cookie, crisp and delicious compared with America’s spongy, artificial-tasting one.

ForFun’s 2009 launch — the biscuits come in chocolate, strawberry and zade (plain, or vanilla) flavors — brought new challenges. Like Demirtas, most customers had never heard of the fortune cookie. Some popped the entire thing in their mouths, paper fortune and all, which prompted Demirtas to redesign ForFun’s packaging. The box now prominently features the phrase “kir, bak, ye” (crack, look, eat), which is a clever play on kurabiye, the Turkish word for cookie or biscuit.

Demirtas also had not taken into account the Turkish tendency to take a fortune literally. “Turks love fortunes because we know that if you really believe what you read, it will happen,” Demirtas said. But that also meant that his cookies’ fortunes shouldn’t be too cryptic, vague or negative. One customer called ForFun to complain after opening a cookie with a fortune advising “Be careful.” Another, after reading “Just wait,” for three hours refused to leave her table at the restaurant where she had opened her cookie.

Now the cookies contain more propitious snippets. Demirtas’ current stock of fortunes — about 1,000 in total — comprise passages from Buddha, Mevlana and Greek philosophers, phrases suggested by friends and dance students, and simple directives. One of the most popular: “You need to go to the beach.”

Demirtas’ initial impulse was on the money. ForFun, which distributes to grocery stores, restaurants and other businesses (in Laleli, an Istanbul neighborhood with a large Russian population, pharmacists give the cookies away with prescriptions), and fills custom orders, boasts a yearly production of about 500,000 cookies. With customers all over Turkey, Demirtas is thinking about purchasing a second machine to increase production.

But one thing the business isn’t immune to is politics: June and July protests in Istanbul and other Turkish cities buffeted sales. They’re coming back slowly, said Demirtas, who blames continuing concerns among Turks about possible military action in Syria.